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EDITORIALS

JUNE 18, 2016 vol lI no 25 EPW Economic & PoliticalWeekly8

Divide and Rule

Communalism has been used for a century and a half to rule over Uttar Pradesh.

In the last days of 1857, the British Commissioner of Oudh

sent the following letter to his superiors in Fort William,

Calcutta:

With reference to the Chief Commrs

letter to his Lordship the Governor

General dated 14th

September in which he stated that he had autho-

rised the sum of `50,000 to be expended in an attempt to raise the Hindoo

population of Bareilly against the Muhomedans. While I am directed to

submit the accompanying extract of a letter from Capt. Gowan dated

the 14th

Ultimo from which his Lordship in Council will perceive that

the attempt was quite unsuccessful and has been abandoned ...

As is by now well-documented, the British used religious

differences and distinctions among and between various commu-

nities to divide and rule over India. This letter is merely one

example, which thankfully seems to have been unsuccessful as

Hindus and Muslims united to fight the colonialists in 1857. We

know that 90 years later, the seeds planted in this and myriad other

attempts to divide the two communities bore their poison fruit.

The British may have left but they have left behind legatees of

their divide and rule politics. Whether it was Hashimpura and

Meerut under the earlier dispensations, or what is happening

now, pitting Hindus and Muslims against each other has been a

favourite ploy of parties aspiring to come to power, or hold on to it.

It is by now clear that the Muzaffarnagar communal violence

of September 2013 was curated by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

leaders of western Uttar Pradesh (UP), the same province and

region where in September 1857 the British tried unsuccessfully

to create such a divide. The Muzaffarnagar violence was timedperfectly to allow the hardening of communal divisions within,

in particular, the Jat communities of western UPand among the

population in general, allowing the BJPto reap a rich harvest of

votes and seats in the 2014 general elections.

The communal cauldron has been kept simmering by the ruling

partys leaders, including cabinet ministers like Mahesh Sharma,

Sanjeev Balyan and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, or parliamentarians

like Yogi Adityanath, Sangeet Som and Sakshi Maharaj, among

many others. Whether it was the made-up stories of love jihad

where apparently Muslim young men were being paid to seduce,

marry and convert innocent Hindu girls, or the demand forghar

wapsior the conversion of Muslims to Hinduism, or the question of

beef-eating which led to the horrific, and planned, public lynching

of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri, issues have been conjured up

from thin air through the good offices of a pliant media and the

old Goebbelsian trick of repeating a lie till it is accepted as truth.

Now we have the wild allegation by a BJPMember of Parlia-ment, Hukum Singh, that 346 Hindu families have had to leave

the small town of Kairana in western UPdue to extortion and

threats from criminals belonging to a particular community, but

of course, Muslims. This led to a ratcheting up of communal ten-

sions in the region, where the fires of Muzaffarnagar and Dadri

are still smouldering. The gargantuan propaganda machine of

the Sangh Parivar was already getting into action. Kairanas Hin-

du exodus was being compared to Kashmirs Pandit exodus.

Twitter and Facebook were buzzing with orchestrated outrage,

and various Hindu organisations were demanding protection of

Hindus and punishment of criminals (read Muslims).

Thankfully, and exasperatingly for the BJP, certain journalists

were quick to go and check on these reports and nail the lies and

half-truths being propagated. There had been no exodus

whether of Hindu families or anybody else; there had been the

usual hollowing out of small towns as people moved out to bigger

cities for education and work. Kairana may have escaped the

ravages of the BJPblitzkrieg, perhaps blessed by the spirit of its

most famous son, Ustad Abdul Karim Khan sahab, the co-founder

of the Kirana gharana of classical music, itself named after this

town. Kairana has been known for communal peace, even as

recently as 2013 when communal violence rocked this region.

Local residents have come together and taken out a peace marchof unity with Hindu and Muslim religious leaders walking hand

in hand to scotch rumours and express solidarity.

But in the months and days leading up to the legislative assembly

elections in UP, we can expect that communal tensions will be

deliberately stoked. The modern day inheritors of the British

divide and rule politics will spend hundreds of crores to make

Indians fear and fight their fellow citizens, so that one among

them can become chief minister in Lucknow. They have succeeded

once with this formula in 2014. Will they succeed this time too?

The political parties opposed to the BJPscommunal, divisive

agenda are themselves often complicit in the worst forms of

communalism, criminality, corruption and misgovernance; an

alternative politics of the left is absent. The coming months will

tell us whether we have grounds for hope.